Student Accountability

What builds accountability in our students?

Case in point:  I teach eighth graders, and when they are absent, they are to follow up with each of their teachers in order to find out what their assignments are.  While such practice is reasonable for eighth graders, how do we teach them accountability?  We don’t tell students in so many words that they should contact their teachers during or following an absence.  Rather, it is more of an unspoken, unwritten expectation.

At my present place of employ, we say that we uphold self-advocacy as one of our key principles, and, as a sub-category of self-advocacy is responsibility and accountability for their work.  However, unless students come to us with the type of home training that lends itself to this, then, the concept seems to elude many of them.  

The aforementioned leads me to this question: Do we really expect eighth graders to connect the dots on their own between self-advocacy and responsibility and accountability for their work?  The reason that many don’t connect the dots is in the way the adults at my school present the idea of self-advocacy, which in and of itself is problematic.  The way self-advocacy is broken down for students is “asking for help when you need it”.  We don’t tell them that it means being accountable and responsible for one’s work.  Of course, the former explanation is very warm and fuzzy; the latter,  rather prickly.  After all, being responsible is scary, and a teacher telling a student that she must be accountable is being “mean”.  

Bottom line: We don’t help students by always softening the blow for them.  If we clearly and simply tell students what we want, and how they are to accomplish the task, it just may produce more students who take greater charge of their learning.